24/7 Glenmore fire crew

Just weeks before a fire came dangerously close to homes, a firehall around the corner finally became fully staffed and was fundamental in extinguishing the blaze.

The Glenmore Firehall, which was used by volunteers and paid on-call firefighters for a number of years, was converted to a career hall with a volunteer hall at the end of June.

City of Kelowna Fire Chief Travis Whiting says the switch was critical.

“It allows for a much faster response time. It gives a guarantee no matter what time of day or night, we have an immediate response that is able to quickly get to further reaches of our community that we weren’t able to get to before,” he said.

An additional 12 positions were created, and it takes about 20 people to staff the hall 24 hours a day.

“We now have a full-time, four-member engine company operating our of here 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said.

Less than a month after the hall became fully manned, a fire erupted just above Yates Road.

“This area, as we saw just a few weeks ago, is prone to having risk of interface wildfires, so having this crew up and running for our summer season was pretty important to us,” said Whiting.

Any time there is an interface fire near homes, every moment counts.

“If we can shave a couple minutes off our response to get there and get water on it, we can contain a fire to a much smaller perimeter,” said Whiting.

The hall will serve the Glenmore area over to UBC, along Glenmore Road down to Dilworth.

John Hindle Drive, slated to open in September, will provide one more pathway for firefighters to get to UBC and protect that part of the community.